Sixers force NBL title decider<\/a><\/p>\nTorrey Craig’s missed free throw for the Sydney Kings in the dying seconds allows the Adelaide 36ers to level the NBL championship series at 2-2 with a gripping 92-91 win.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wells had been critical of the referee’s non-calling of the physical Dellavedova after the Kings’ victory in Game 3 on Sunday.<\/p>\n
That earned a strong rebuke from Kings coach Brian Goorjian, who on Tuesday labelled Wells’s comments “weak” and showing “disrespect” to an “Australian icon”.<\/p>\n
“I want to just be really clear \u2026 my comments about the so-called way I viewed the game was not disrespectful to Matthew Dellavedova in any way,” Wells said after Game 4.<\/p>\n
“I have a ton of respect for him, what he’s done and what he means for everybody.<\/p>\n
“I was just fighting for my team and my guys. It’s not disrespectful in any way.”<\/p>\n
![\"Mike](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/f3180d53abc723b6556cb51137f2a723.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Mike Wells has defended comments he made about Matthew Dellavedova. (AAP: Matt Turner)<\/p>\n
Following the Kings’ nail-biting defeat in Adelaide, Goorjian doubled down on his views on Wells’s comments.<\/p>\n
“There was a lot of talk coming into this,” the six-time NBL championship-winning coach said.<\/p>\n
“I felt that was inappropriate. I felt we had the quality refs on the game tonight.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think they took anything in from what was said. They refereed a good game.”<\/p>\n
Both the Sixers’ victories in this series have come at home and been decided in the dying seconds.<\/p>\n
The Kings’ wins, also both at home, have been by 44 and 13 points.<\/p>\n
The best-of-five series will conclude in Sydney on Easter Sunday.<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adelaide 36ers coach Mike Wells has rejected an accusation he has shown a lack of respect to Matthew…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[48979,64,63,726,68071,9663,11288,72499,232470,15057,85,68107],"class_list":{"0":"post-579433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-adelaide-36ers","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-brian-goorjian","13":"tag-championship","14":"tag-grand-final","15":"tag-matthew-dellavedova","16":"tag-mike-wells","17":"tag-nbl","18":"tag-sports","19":"tag-sydney-kings"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}